Chapter 24 Words Unspoken
Chapter twenty-four
Words Unspoken
-Kael-
The crack of steel rang through the courtyard as Maris twisted on nimble feet, ducking beneath Corin’s broad sweep of a blade.
She was faster now. Not just nimble, but precise, fluid.
Each motion like water —she moved as if born to this, no longer a seamstress dodging shadows, but something sharper. Something meant for battle.
“Again.” Riven called out.
Maris whirled, catching Corin’s next strike on the edge of her blade, the clash reverberating up her arms. Sweat glistened at her temple, but her breathing was steady. Controlled. Inhumanly so.
Even the twin generals stilled. For the first time, they did not see a human pet on the training floor. They saw something else entirely.
Above, in the private overlook that cast long shadows across the sparring ring, Kael stood in silence.
The balcony windows of their shared quarters had been thrown open to the fresh air, the scent of damp stone and crushed herbs drifting in on the breeze. He had been watching her, not just today, but every day this week — quietly marveling at how she bloomed.
But today, as the wind blew threw the windows he turned at the sound of pages turning.
Maris had left her journal unattended and open.
Kael wasn’t proud of what he did. But he had spent too long trying to silence the storm inside him, trying to trust that Maris had given herself to him fully.
He read the first open page. Then another. And by the third, his heart had all but stopped.
Words describing a male he knew well.
Not written once, but many times.
At first, Kael thought it was a coincidence. But her descriptions— her aching confusion — the male with violet eyes and a voice that melted into her bones…
It was him.
Alarik. King of Calanthe. The fucking bastard.
His hands clenched the leather cover until it nearly split.
He turned back to the window, gaze locked on Maris as she moved in the ring, every motion now suspiciously graceful, touched by something not entirely of her own making.
The journal fell open again in his palm.
Another entry. Scribbled hastily.
“The male in my dreams— he feels like starlight and sorrow. He speaks in riddles. But he sees me for what I am.”
Kael’s breath caught.
“He called me Veil Breaker.”
Veil Breaker, his thoughts drifted back to a time when he was child.
Stories of the curse freshly cast onto the continent, caused by the creation of children, like himself — nightbound blood. Not Vampire. Not fae. Damned by the gods themselves.
The blood drained from his face.
The words struck like iron through ice.
The Veil Breaker, a story told to children in those early years.
An unimaginable key to end the curse that would come in the form of the unexpected —an impossibility. Considered a useless hope, those stories faded as the centuries went on. A collective lost memory among the continent.
But Alarik had thought broader of Maris, seeing her as the impossible brought to flesh — a beckon. Spoken it into existence within her dreams. Written in a damned journal. Veil Breaker.
His mind flooded with the words of the seer’s taunt. It was so much larger than he had thought. He cursed himself and his ignorance. His memories flared, hot and vicious, the way they always did when he let himself go back.
The night of the peace summit. The sacred hall. Elenwe’s silver-gold gown. Her smile as she reached for him.
The moment the gods seized his hand, bent his mind to their will.
The blade in her chest. Her life drained from her.
The scream that tore Alarik in two. A re-akined hatred that Kael had been promised to feel the wrath of.
And now Alarik had found something Kael loved, something to rip away from his grasp and destroy.
He hadn’t voiced it until this very moment, but the realization was like striking bone.
He loved her.
And Alarik had seen it. Had wormed his way into Maris’s dreams, seeking to twist what was his into something unrecognizable, a force to claim.
He cursed his short sightedness. Thinking of her as an unnatural curiosity. Kael’s rage rolled off his shadows like poison tipped blades ready to unleash.
Not on Maris, never her. But the scheming bastard, playing games.
The sound of Maris laughing below, light — winded from the fight, cut through him like a blade. Kael closed the journal with quiet finality. The shadows at his back stirred, waiting for command.
He did not speak.
He did not tell Maris goodbye.
He simply turned, and slipped into the smoke.
The drapes fluttering like the breath of a ghost and on the low table in the tower suite, Maris’s journal lay shut, untouched.
But beneath it, a single page had been folded over, its corner bent from where Kael’s thumb had lingered.
The entry it marked read:
“Sometimes I wonder if the gods meant for me to be found. Maybe a purpose I’m yet to comprehend.“
-Maris-
Maris returned from the library with a stack of tomes tucked in her arms. Her fingers ached from copying passages that Aldwyn had asked her to review — strange riddles and fragments of lore that twisted in her mind.
The corridors felt oddly still.
Normally, by now, Kael would have appeared either waiting in the alcove where the stair curved toward their private quarters, or sprawled in the low-backed chair beside the hearth, brooding with a glass of blood-red wine in hand.
She had come to know his moods in the silence, the way he watched her enter the room like he might devour her— scold her— or both.
But now? Nothing.
A frown tugged at her lips as she entered their shared chambers. The fire had burned low in the hearth, casting the carved stone in soft orange glow. The air felt off, emptier, as if the room itself held its breath.
“Kael?” she called gently, setting the stack of books down near the armchair. No answer.
She noticed the subtle shift in the room.
The way the chair near the open balcony had been moved, only slightly, but just enough to show someone had stood there in its place. And on the low table beside it… her journal.
It sat there like a wound, half-shadowed in the firelight. Closed, but not how she normally left it.
Her stomach dropped.
She stepped forward, heart climbing into her throat, her breath suddenly shallow. She reached for it slowly, fingers trembling, not with fear, but a terrible dawning realization.
She had left it open. That morning. In her haste to reach the training yard, she’d tossed it aside with hardly a thought.
And Kael… gods above.
He’d read it.
The air seemed colder now. She could almost feel the ghost of his presence like smoke that had slipped through the walls and left her behind.
“No,” she whispered.
She opened the journal, flipping rapidly through the pages, heart thudding with every scrawl of ink. The entries were her private ramblings — thoughts she hadn’t dared say aloud. Dreams of a man with violet eyes and words that felt like prophecy. Confusion, guilt, longing.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
The thought was a blade. She stumbled backward and sank into the nearest chair, pressing her fists into her lap to stop their trembling. The journal slid to the floor beside her, pages fluttering like dead leaves.
He was gone.
No servants had mentioned a meeting. The generals hadn’t summoned her for supper. Even the wraiths had vanished into the walls.
She felt —hollow.
The heat that had once filled this space, the dark sultry connection they had spent weeks building was gone — ripped away like fabric torn from bone.
She whispered his name again, quieter this time. A prayer of return —truly. But only the wind answered, curling through the open window, brushing past her like the breath of something ancient.
Maris folded over, cradling her head in her hands.
She hadn’t meant for him to read it. Gods, she hadn’t even meant to write half of it.
They were the ramblings of a girl caught between two storms, her heart unraveling beneath Kael’s touch, her mind spiraling from the dream-encounters with a stranger who should not have known her name.
A stranger she did not know. And now Kael was gone. Without a word. Without a goodbye.
She stared into the fire, watching the flames dance with her guilt. Somewhere beyond the walls of Calyrix, his shadow moved.
Maris did not sleep. She tossed in the vast bed, her skin fevered and restless beneath the silken sheets. Her body ached — throbbing beneath her bones. It was as though her blood was singing in a language she didn’t know how to speak.
Her magic —once a whisper —now thundered beneath her skin. Something changed.
Kael’s absence felt like a split in the world. But in that silence, something else bloomed.
And when sleep finally claimed her —it dragged her under.
The dream began with starlight.
Not the soft, silver shimmer of night, but a violent cascade of white fire from a sky that didn’t belong to this world. She stood on a glass-like plain, black as ink and reflective as still water. The sky above cracked open like a wound, pouring light into her chest.
She gasped and felt no breath.
Then she saw her.
A woman formed of brilliance and shadow, her hair flowing like liquid dusk, her skin veiled in constellations, glittery. She moved with the grace of moons, each step leaving golden ripples in the air. Her eyes were galaxies, and her voice...
“I’ve been waiting to meet you.”
Maris didn’t speak. Couldn’t.
The figure stepped closer, the hem of her silver robes whispering secrets across the ground.
“You were not made by accident. You were not stolen. You were called.”
Maris’s pulse roared in her ears.
The figure touched her cheek, cool, gentle, eternal, and leaned in. Her lips pressed to Maria’s temple in a kiss that burned like a brand.
And in that searing moment, she saw:
A Veil cast over the world like a spider’s web, fragile, fraying, holding back horrors no one remembered how to name. A curse spun of fury and distaste. Of Fear.
Five gods, thrones crumbling, one missing.
Darkness, a crown, a child born of four bloods: human, vampire, fae, divine blessing.
The dream shattered, as quickly as it began.
Maris woke with a scream ripping from her throat, heart galloping like a hunted thing. Her skin shimmered faintly in the dark, the starburst in her eyes glowing softly for one terrible moment before fading.
She stared at her trembling hands.
This was the change she had felt looming beneath her skin. A blessing. A curse. A fire she could no longer put out.
Valea rushed to her side from the apartment entrance.
She took Maris into her arms and held her tightly.